TIM ETHRIDGE: Shooting ignites passion on both sides

Tuesday morning, a few hours shy of four full days since the mass killings at a Connecticut elementary school, back-to-back phone calls rang in.

The first caller was angry over the daily poll in the Courier & Press, which asked, in full, "What legislative change would you most like to see in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., shootings?"

Why, he demanded, did five of the six answers involve some sort of control (banning all guns, assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, armor-piercing ammunition, or requiring background checks for private gun sales) while only the last suggested we make no changes to gun laws?

Just the phrasing, he said, proved that we were a liberal publication. Guns don't kill people, he said, people kill people.

After that one-sided conversation ended, the phone rang again.

This caller, just as vehement, questioned why the paper hadn't come out with a stronger stance against guns.

Don't we understand the evilness of what happened? Can't we see that this will continue if our legislators don't make a stand? What justification is there for weapons that can fire off bullet after bullet, in so many seconds, and cause so much harm and heartbreak?

So there I sat, wrestling with the questions we've all wrestled with since midday two Fridays ago: What can be done, what can I do, what would I have done, and, worst of all, what if one of those kids was our own?

Is the answer to arm teachers, or projectionists at movie theaters, or clerks at shopping malls?

Is there relevance to the argument that, had someone at Sandy Hook School had been armed, they could have stopped the madman before 20 children, and six adults acting as their protectors, were slaughtered?

Did our forefathers really plan to extend rights to such weapons of mass destruction, or did they simply see guns as a means of providing for (through hunting) and protecting families and property?

Is this a story about mental illness, and how we fail those who are suffering? Is it about questionable parenting, having such guns in a home where a young adult has shown signs of distress? Did the scenario, for the shooter, play out like any of the many violent video games, which glorify the kill?

Are we doing enough to protect our children at school, seemingly a safe haven with nurturing adults and what, on the surface, would seem to be solid safety plans?

I don't have the answers, either for readers who feel we're too liberal or too conservative on this issue — or for preventing such tragedies from happening again. We need more education. We need more prevention. We need more resources dedicated to mental health issues.

And I'm convinced we need fewer guns, at least those that can kill in a rapid-fire manner, and less ammunition. Had the shooter been forced to pause and reload more often, how many children might have survived? Could that brief moment been enough for one of the adults to disarm the gunman?

Since that day, we're told gun sales and ammunition sales have taken off. The same happened when President Obama first was elected and Second Amendment supporters were convinced that their rights would soon be taken away. All that truly happened was gun-store owners and manufacturers pumped up their prices and profits.